Dallas Think Tank Makes National Waves

If you think all the nation’s intellectual steam is generated from New York or Washington (the citadels of those “pointy-headed intellectuals” George Wallace used to flay), think again. Dallas’s own National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning think tank, is having a profound impact on national policy-making.

These high-candlepower thinkers have cranked out some ideas that are helping to fuel the so-called Reagan Revolution.

The NCPA’s work on the privatization of Medicare (through the use of partially tax-exempt medical IRAs) has resulted in seven bills before Congress, supported by both liberals and conservatives. The NCPA wants much less government but it is not just another boiler room of right-wing ax-grinders.

Says NCPA’s president. Dr. John Goodman: “The report that got the most national attention, and by that I mean it made every paper in the nation, was when we pointed out that when Congress raised the retirement age for Social Security, it constituted a massive transfer of wealth from blacks to whites because blacks have a shorter life expectancy.”

And a report released in early November may have a major impact on the ailing National Park Service. The report, documenting much mismanagement of public lands by the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, makes a case for privatizing government land, with the government selling or giving the property to private oil, timber, mining, grazing, and assorted private interests.

Goodman expects to make more headlines across the country-and certainly in Dallas- with a report detailing the results of an international study of urban mass transit. The report will say that the planning behind DART is, in a nutshell, wrong-particularly on the use of rail to move commuters.

NCPA got its start in February of 1983. when a group of Dallas businessmen decided that the Southwest would benefit from the organized efforts of some conservative thinkers. They soon were able to round up some with credentials both impressive and impeccable: among them is the recent Nobel prize winner, economist Dr. James Buchanan of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

The NCPA’s board, composed almost entirely of business heavyweights, includes Jere Thompson of The Southland Corporation and John F. Stephens, chairman of Employers Casualty Co.

“True, one of our motivations is we believe the private sector performs better than the public sector,” says Goodman. “We are looking for private sector alternatives. But another factor important in the thinking of the founders was that Dallas and the Southwest had seen a lot of economic and cultural growth, and what was needed now was some intellectual growth to complement it. One of the things we’ve managed to do is give Dallas and Texas an intellectual identity.”